December 12, 2005

The end of the oil and gas era may be in sight, but the
current energy boom in the West means that a rough and wild ride is
still ahead. Also in this issue: After
Michele DeHart of the Fish Passage Center in Portland, Ore.,
publicly supported a plan to protect salmon, angry lawmakers led by
Sen. Larry Craig yanked the center’s funding.

Northeastern Utah, southern Wyoming and western Colorado
are humming with new talk of oil shale, but industry insiders say
that the technology has years to go before oil shale development is
financially and environmentally viable

Vine Deloria Jr., author of Custer Died for Your
Sins, is remembered as a witty, impassioned and
iconoclastic writer, historian, and teacher, who fought for Indian
peoples and their right to self-determination

The Forest Service is considering "green" certification
for timber produced on the national forests, but environmentalists
fear it's a form of greenwashing that will wrongly legitimize
public-land logging